The first game of paintball was played in June, 1981, near Henniker, New Hampshire. Following, from The New, Official Survival Game Manual, by Lionel Atwill. If you find a copy of this book, treasure it, because its hard to find. Note that the equipment (particularly the goggles) shown in the photos in the book is not considered safe for use in the sport today.

Charles Gaines, Hayes Noel, and Bob Gurnsey get the credit for inventing paintball.

"One night during the spring of 1976 or 1977, Hayes Noel and I were grilling a king mackerel and drinking gills and tonic on the patio of a house in Jupiter Island, Florida. While we were grilling and drinking we talked, as we often do, about play. We both believe in play. Specifically, in this ginny conversation, we began to construct from an idea of Hayes's a form of play that might contain the childhood exhilaration of stalking and being stalked, might call on a hodgepodge of instincts and skills and might allow as wide a variety of responses as possible to this rich old question: How do I get from where I am now to where I want to be?"

Another gentleman, George Butler, located the Nel-Spot paint marker in an equipment catalog. One thing led to another, and another, and The Survival Game was born.

The history of the Nelson Paint Company: Nelson started making paint for the people of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 1940. In 1948, some forester friends of the founders, Evan Nelson and Charles Nelson, asked them to formulate a special paint to be used to mark trees for the management of forests. In 1960, Evan and Charles developed a wax pellet and then an oil-based paintball for use in marking trees at long distances and hard to reach spots. Eventually, farmers, ranchers, and veterinary operations started using them to mark their animals. These markers and the oil-based paintballs were used in the first paintball game. Due to the difficulty in clean up of the oil-based fill, a water-based washable fill was soon developed.

information from ActionPursuitGames.com